President Donald Trump's chief of staff has proven to be more of an ally than a moderator to Trump, despite what some believed when he was chosen for the job.

White House Chief of Staff John Kelly recently came to Trump's defense after a congresswoman accused the president of disrespecting the widow of a fallen soldier. He accused Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., of disrespect for listening in on the phone call, which Myeshia Johnson took on speakerphone while riding in a car with Wilson to meet her late husband's body.

He also said that when he was growing up, "women were sacred," as was "the dignity of life" and "religion," but "that seems to be gone," according to The New York Times.

When the Trump administration debated lowering the cap on refugees, which stood at 110,000 this last summer, Kelly reportedly voiced his opinion that the cap should be between one and zero. Trump eventually lowered it to 45,000.

"Kelly has been an enabler of Trump's mission," Juliette Kayyem, a former assistant homeland security secretary in the Obama Administration, told the Times. "Judge him that way."

"The real issue is understanding really who John Kelly is," former Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, for whom Kelly worked at the Pentagon, told the Times. "If you understand what makes him tick, then it all fits together."

Kelly "is a Marine first and foremost," Panetta added. "In addition to being a Marine, he was born and raised in Boston" among working-class families. "You combine those two and you realize" that Kelly "shares some of these deep values, some of which Trump himself has tried to talk about."

"I think he appreciates the struggles of America's working class — the blue-collar workers over the last 30, 40 years, the kind of people who have to take a shower after they get off work, not before they go to work — and the impact that mass unskilled and low-skilled immigration has had on working-class wages in our society," Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., added to the Times.